If you remember who killed JR, you must be a Boomer.
Well, I am back. After an encounter with a blood disease that entailed a bone marrow transplant, and a run-in with some chemotherapy, I am on the other side, coming out of the drug fog and regaining my strength.
My wife and some friends advised me to blog about my experience. Perhaps I could help people going through the same type of experience feel better or understand that some of the symptoms or reactions are normal, to be expected. Certainly, having your hands and feet swell, or having to pee every hour of every day can be scary. The fear is the unknown, and since every body is different, no doctor can really help you predict all the effects that will be experienced. As I read the stories of survivors, and their caregivers, on the internet, I sometimes cried. I did not have a religious epiphany per say, but staring down your imminent mortality can focus your thoughts into some dark holes. After all I am a Boomer, 58 years old, semi retired, and otherwise in great health. This was not supposed to happen to me ! At least not for many many years.
For me, maintaining a positive attitude is the main thing – really, that’s a life lesson whether you are sick or not. Personally, I am at the stage of my recovery where its time to get on with my life. The cancer did not kill me, so its time to show I am stronger for the experience. Re-energizing my blog is an example of this recovery.
I decided not to write about my personal life experiences, as I am trying to keep this blog on Boomers and our general malaise. Really, who wants to read a sad story. I am striving to get Boomers off their asses and see the big picture. In my view, this big picture encompasses Boomers as navel glazing, short sighted, goal-less lost souls who do not see the future.
I have called this situation as Boomers with a “hole in their soul”. We all seem to be unable to plan ahead, but that is a topic for a future blog.
After discussing my decision with family and friends, I was shocked to realize that, in many ways, my situation is very average, no matter how you slice it. This realization hurts, cause I am a Boomer, and arn’t we all different and special ? No so much, I realized.
Take our physical condition as an example. Medically, everyone is taking pills these days. When I tried to brag about the number of prescriptions I was on, everyone had their own stories. While some of these involved doctor recommended vitamins as opposed to hard medications, it seems everyone our age is on some regiment. Amazing. Even my wife, who has never been to a hospital in her life, has two shelves in the pantry with her pills. Does every Boomer have a daily pill sorter/reminder box ? Pills for Diabetes and heart ailments, equipment for sleep apnea and nerve issues, and various diet supplements seem to be the most prevalent conditions, but I am sure obesity is also a factor for many of us. It’s a good thing we spend lots of money on our health care systems, as we will need them.
Like Teacher’s sick days, our health care systems were supposed to be a kind of insurance, something we all hoped we would never need, but if we did, it was there to save us from some catastrophic condition that was not our fault. My blood condition, according to the Cancer doctors, was not hereditary, nor diet related, just a free radical causing some internal system to go haywire. Not my fault, and exactly why I feel lucky that there was a cure, however horrific. Having smoked for 30 years, I would have regretted contracting lung cancer, but I would probably have accepted the disease as earned, if very unwanted. Now, like the Teachers feeling entitled to their sick days like some form of compensation to be saved, we all feel that our health care system needs to be funded because Boomers will be using it to fix our eating / drinking / physical habits.
Our sameness is just not in the health arena. Financially, everyone is chasing fewer investment ideas and riches. When I ask my friends what they are investing in, most talk about mutual funds or pension plans controlling their wealth. It seems to me that most of us spent our lives investing in real estate, buying the best house we could and watching it increase in value. Every other cent was spend on things, few of which were retirement related. I am reminded of the idea that a sign of intelligence is the ability to forgo an outcome today for an increased payout tomorrow – delaying satisfaction shows an ability to rationally view life. I guess retirement planning looks the same to all of us. Freedom 55 was just a bad dream. As we start to retire, we are all chasing enough returns to fund our dreams. Whether its travel, helping our kids start their lives, or figuring out that our pets may wind up eating better than we do, the average Boomer plan will not sustain us in retirement. Perhaps that’s why more and more Boomers are mortgaging their homes, their major or only asset, to live better today.
The same ideas pertain to our marriages and our kids. Short term thinking, over consumption, and a lack of planning bespeak to the perfect Boomer outcome, taking the family to a vacation buffet restaurant.
So, enough about me. Lets reboot. Next time on Boomers – wtf !, the US shutdown and why we need Republicans now more than ever.
If you thought Argo was a football film, you must be a Canadian Boomer.
My wife wanted to see the latest box office films, so like a good husband, I ripped them off the
internet. I started with the latest Bond film, “Skyfall”, is a lesson in never moving back home again, no matter what age you are. It will kill your mother.
While downloading the oil genre films, it occurs to me again that we are way past peak oil, and appear to have only learned one lesson from that mess. Peak oil, by my definition, is
cheap oil at any quantity. Technology will assist us in continually finally new oil, but it will not be cheap. $30 oil is gone forever. The lesson in this is that while oil was cheap and plentiful, we could have a job recovery, we could have a technology revolution ( see Apple and Google ) and we maintained wage equality – at least we slowed down the Capitalistic grinding away at the wage gaps. In other words, we need a new technology revolution, or we are
handicapping ourselves to oil.
But I digress. The effects of oil prices on our economy are well known. What strikes me is the pseudo-histories as told in the two spy classics, and the lessons renewed. Essentially, the
middle east is an ongoing Orange versus the Greens religious war. Catholics ( interestingly, the world just picked a pope, and I had to look up how to spell Catholics – talk about being
out of the news lately ) and non-Catholics fought for market share for centuries. Sunnis and Shiites have also been fighting this war for popularity for a long time, but lacked the modern business tools to really make a go of it. Its a wonder what some cash flow and communications technology will do to gain the upper hand in this campaign.
The Sunnis got their money first, from oil. In Zero, a CIA operative is discussing with a colleague that the Saudi’s understand the nature of the conflict, that they “get it”,
and to leave a particular problem to them – “they know how to kick ass” ! I realize that we are being exposed to the film writers propaganda, but it sure sounds real to me. In any event, I am sure that the religious figures in Saudi Arabia are as powerful as the Iranian Ayatollahs, but since the House of Saud has more free cash flow, they get to preach from spots of isolation from the West – they are not exposed as the crazies that the Ayatollahs are. Lastly, their citizens are bought off.
The Iranians, on the other hand, came to the money thing last, and proceeded to screw up the business model. All they had were religious zealots who were willing to do anything for their demi-gods. We can argue which path has been more effective, especially in light of the Western sanctions now limiting Iranian options. One wonders if this is a Saudi strategy of not allowing Iran to have the zealots and the money.
For me thought, the real joke of Argo was the fact that a US film just told all Iranians to go
fuck themselves – its essentially the last line of the movie – and I did not hear of one fatwa !!! Last I heard, some Iranians were going to sue the film makers. What a difference from a few years ago.
By the way, today’s joke centers on a CFL football team, the Toronto Argonauts, who, when they were losing, picked up the catch-phrase “Argo fuck yourselves”. After the cheerleaders would yell out the teams catch phrase Lets go Argos, the crowds would add the last two words. Classic, and more fun than a bouncy stadium ball. I am sure there are many such slogans in the NFL or the Premier League.
Pull back for a second, and it is easy to see almost all of the middle east as a consequence of the Sunni / Shiite war for power. Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and all the minority sects ( the Alawite of Syria ) in the region have an affiliation to either camp, or must be affiliated to survive politically ( see Iraq, sub. Saddam, sub.sub Ba’ath party ).
Focus on Israel for a moment, and one can see a strategic solution of just keeping your head down and letting the Muslims fight it out – classic divide and conquer. The Muslims have
tried to use Israel as an enticement to keep the West involved in the conflict. A great questions
for Conservatives to answer here is who has the most to lose if the West continues its move to Asia. Obama’s pivot, both militarily and business wise away from the Middle East in general, and Israel in particular, is huge for the region, a strategy for Israel safety, and a strategic box for the religions in the region. It gets the US out of the way of an Israel attack on Iran, tells everyone that the US is not beholden to the Saudi’s for oil anymore, and all at a savings to taxpayers. Amazing. Now if we only had a solution for our expensive oil
problem, we would be set !
Next time on Boomers – wtf !, why Paul Krugman needs a Re-boot:
If you remember when the Dead Sea was only “sick”, you must be a Boomer.
In comments to my previous blog’s, I have been informed that I need to keep the blogs shorter. Let me know if you have any other comments on how we can together pull our Boomer family and friends out of their inaction ( remember, be positive ! ) and into a realization that there is so much more to do that is fulfilling and satisfying.
Unfortunately, many Boomers believe that the quickest way to fill this metaphysical hole in their sole is by eating.
It’s a simple formula really: more beef = more endocrines = more good feelings overall. If that were the case, we would have the happiest cohort in the history of the civilization.
We’re not happy ! Amazing. How can this not be so ? Perhaps if we changed our diets, ate more fish, fruits, nuts, veggies, or did a cleanse
Everyone seems to like little facts today, to use to drive home their points, or dispute others, I call them little facts because unless you know the context, they can sometimes be dangerous. Like this factoid I found last summer in a hi-tech journal of Printed Circuit Boards:
Factoid : 6% North American population = 34% bio mass
What that says is that the population of North America is 6% of the world’s total population, but if you weighted up the world’s human weight, North Americans have 34% of that total. Think about that – we weigh almost 6x the average of the people on the planet. So, can we agree that getting skinny will not only prolong our lives, keep us healthier, and that it has not worked as a solution to our desires? Really, eating is the worst kind of drug, with minimal short term highs for devastating long term health risks.
I think we can see that once we get over navel gazing at our increasingly large fat deposits, working through this list of potential foods and fads can take years, even decades, before we realize that filling in the hole is not working. With all the health effects now obvious, I would argue that the hole is actually larger, since it is now combined with guilt, and a sense that we are receding from a solution, not getting any closer. The buffet was a false prophet.
Self-esteem might be the right word to explain what diminished. Funny that, a potential solution, eating our way to happiness, actually increased the size of the hole.
The foodies have a slogan for this – eat less, and for more money. The point they make is that eating right costs more than eating poorly.
Just look at our fast food chains. They are changing to attract the older set, with coffee klatches and group seating, and gourmet coffee, as they know that we are all afraid to eat their foods all the time. Look at the price. Having 2 burgers and a drink will cost you the same as a decent buffet in most towns!
Really, either solution is bad, but that is how we are marketed to. Making a salad at home, and grilling your own steak is more time consuming and expensive, but better for you. Thus the eat better for more philosophy.
In addition, studies have shown that our vegetables do have less nutrition than they had 20 years ago. I am not sure why, but you would need to eat lots more carrots to get the same nutrients you got then. I was at a dinner party recently when the hostess presented a plate of carrots that were red, pink, black and blue. After asking what the hell she was trying to serve, I was informed that these were real carrots, grown locally, without using genetically modified seeds.
Maybe the best metaphor for our Boomer journey is the tomato, my favourite veggie. I had gotten tired of tomatoes recently, and I put it down to it being winter, and maybe the weather was causing the taste and texture to be unfulfilling. For me, I need a good tomato in a salad or its all bland. I read an article describing how, in their attempts to genetically modify the tomato to look consistent, be pickable early and still mature, and not spoil over great transport distances, the favour had accidently been modified out ! The sweetness had been lost in our great march to progress and profits.
In the next Boomers – wtf !, the Sequester and whom is to blame.
If you have been to the website 40over40.ca, you must be a Boomer !
After a vacation and a computer issue fix, we are back looking at the debt problems that us Boomers have. It does not matter whether we inherited this debt from our parents, or its the result of our own spending habits, the result is that we are screwed.
The question is how do we get Boomers out of their current world view, so that we can focus on the challenges ahead.
Capitalism works because we consume thinks. Once we have too much debt, we can not spend the money needed to continue our consumption society. Jobs get lost, and economic recession sets in. It’s a question of what to do going forward. To date, Capitalism has been successful world wide, raising our standard of living to where Boomers are the richest cohort ever. This wealth has allowed us to pay for certain rights and privileges that past generations could only dream of. Global women’s rights is a great example. Our wealth allowed the west to invest in female education, health, and voting.
You only have to look at India today, to realize that many men do not want their female family members to have rights, as they do not have the economic power to give up the free family care, the ability to sell daughters for their dowry, and mess with their social life. It will prove interesting if the current rape case, with the Indian girl who was raped on a private bus, and died from her injuries, if the suspects will actually be convicted.
Democracies have used Capital the same way a train uses the locomotive. Loading too many passenger cars into one locomotive will eventually slow it down, whereby everyone loses. Capitalism, the locomotive, needs to be optimized, so that the whole train continues forward at the right speed. Indeed, the more efficient the locomotive, the more passenger cars that can be added. This “too many cars” vs “making the motor go faster” is the genus of the current fiscal fight now being fought in the US today. Obama believes that the train speed is irrelevant, as he sees more potential passengers that need to be boarded. Republicans believe that too many boarders will slow the train down, effecting all of the passengers.
The grey area has logic on both sides. Liberals make the point that everyone should have a change to join the train, not just the ones who can easily jump onboard. If this slows down the train, well, any speed that allows for full participation is the greater value. Republicans believe that the speed of the train is the main thing, and that keeping the speed up is of paramount value. As long as the train speed is maintained, more people can board. Thus, both allow for the trickle down of benefits to the people, but disagree on the right process to accomplish this on a long term basis. Trying to get the train started, once its stopped or slowed, is very difficult. The last time a re-start process was tried, we lived through the Great Depression. Everyone got thrown off ! We all lost.
Our Liberal democracy does its best to weight both sides of this equation. Unfortunately, we the voters continue to ask for and get stuff, like health care that we can not afford. Our bloated debt levels are a testimony to our navel glazing. Believing that somehow the train will magically speed up, even as we only add more weight on, is pure fantasy. It is easy to see how our democracy will have to change in the near future
Capitalism, our locomotive, also has problems that our government has not deemed worthy of a fix. One example is pollution, Yes, the smokestacks cause health problems, but they are needed for the locomotive to work for all of us. Finding a fix is paramount, but outlawing pollution is near impossible. Remember, the strength of our economic system is that it works very well, and its major weakness is that is works very well. Capitalism works, and its weaknesses need to be addressed separately. Perhaps the failure belongs to our Liberal Democracy government, and to us ?
Another issue with Capitalism is wage inequality. Capitalism works by forcing the jobs into the right places, where workers will work for the least amount of wages. Thus we now get most of our clothing and household items from China. We all benefit from this activity as we get to save money by paying less for these items. This process resulted in jobs going overseas, leaving the US in droves. There is no capitalistic process to reverse this trend, so we better get used to wearing the Chinese t-shirt while you bus to the unemployment line.
Losing these mostly middle class jobs is an effect of Capitalism, not a result. This effect can be mitigated, and in some cases reversed, by investing on long term items like education, research, and entrepreneurship. Until then, lower expectations will be the order of the day.
The impact is that Boomers want things, mostly for free, but now lack the ability to pay the taxes needed to fund these benefits. Boomers kids are having trouble getting jobs, especially well paying jobs to fund these items. Boomers expect to retire and live well, without the means or savings to do so.
Boomers need to wake up to the world around us, raise our eyes from our navels, realize the financial landscape, and make different choices.
Next time on Boomers – wtf !, why we hide behind our navels, instead of coping with the real future.
If mangoes sound like a great investment idea and a workable diet, you must be a Boomer !
Welcome back to the Boomers – wtf ! blog, presenting a different view of our future as currently programmed. We are changing as we grow, and will continue to evolve. The questions is what will we become when we grow up ?
Our growth has to be different than what we have gone through in the past. You just have to look at the social mores, and how they have evolved over time. Consider the growing break-up of the family, with single people on the rise, and marriage on the decline. These mores are changing our world, and not planning for them is a folly we need to fix. Just consider that grey divorce has increased 50% in the last decade.
One of the great things about the holiday season was the chance to sit in your family pod, and share stories – parental stories about the past, intertwined with their beliefs, memories with no present day relevance. Your kids, probably in the late teens or early twenties, have very few stories, and really just comment on your myths with their own perspective. What comes out are the changing social mores as they pass down from generation to generation. For example, the percentage of people getting married and having kids continues to drop. Drug use is gaining more acceptance, and is now legal in many states and countries. Same for gay marriage and gay rights. Bullying and other social activities we all grew up with, dealt with, and moved on, are now call to actions with the young. Discrimination and multi-ethnic issues are fading. Financial queries grow, sometimes to very personal levels.
This is important because these changing social mores affect our society, and change us in sometimes scary ways. Make no mistake, this discussion is with the Boomers, not our parents. They, our parents, don‘t have any worries. In their cocoon, they have all the money they need, have great health care, and generally realize that they will not get abused by their kids, us Boomers, because our kids are watching. They are set-up very well, and will miss the changes to come.
Our kids are too far away from worrying about the debt issues we face, the discussions about the choices we have to make about our future, and accept all the social changes that are occurring. When asked, they bespeak of their times, one we can remember like looking in a foggy rear view mirror. It’s not their turn yet. So, over the next 40 years, how do we make decisions that will help us ?
There is no question that Boomers are not like their parents, and while we might think we are like our kids, we are nowhere near having the social mores of either group. Our parents had a world view that barely gave women the vote, believed gayness was a disease, and held developing peoples as makers of their own destiny. Really, Boomers were able to ignore our parents opinions and change our social filters. We were able to view all people as equal, to understand and appreciate that some of us needed a helping hand, and that responsibility for society was shared. This was best expressed in the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”.
Why we then expected our children to completely share our beliefs is comical. It’s a sign of the normal blindness of parents to not appreciate that change is expected.
Really, the social mores of our kids have something to teach us, if we listen. While our parents cocooned when presented with old age, Boomers need to embrace our young spirit as embodied by our kids, without trying to occupy their space. An example of this difference is the physicality of the generations, and how we all feel 10 years younger that our legal age. Our parents, at 55, did not do the level of sports or working out that we Boomers have done. With modern medicine and our search for the perfect waistline, we are in much better shape than our predecessors. Our children, on the other hand, may be healthier, what with lower smoking and better nutrition information, but they are not as active as we have been. Maybe that means that they will need fewer knee replacements, but will counter with needing new thumbs, from all their game playing.
This Boomer energy is what we need to change our lifestyle. We sit, we watch TV, we don’t know our neighbours, and we live with stress. Navel-glazing is becoming a Boomer sport. One only has to see the governments we vote for to see that we want everything to stay the same as they re today. Since hopefully you realize that this is impossible, that our society is going to change whether we like it or not, so lets influence our surroundings, before they influence us. Managing change should be fun, so lets start. Send me your ideas.
Next time, on the Boomers – wtf blog, why Capitalism is considered perfect, but is not perfect for us.
If you think buying Minnesota property for its future beachfront value is a great investment idea, you must be a Boomer !
Welcome to 2013, and I hope you and your family had a great holiday season and start to this new year. Welcome back to the Boomers – wtf ! blog, where we contemplate the future of our cohort. Individually, we are failing to consider our potential. Since we do have lots of time, lets agree on some ideas for becoming the Greatest Generation, and do it soon, so our parents can be present when we get the trophy.
I know, that sounded like a reality game show. The fact is, reality game shows have mega ratings these days, no matter how stupid the idea or outlandish the participants. The point is that so many people are cocooning, and watching the drivel.
I enjoy TV. Better said, I enjoy having lots of content available where and when I want it. Be it sports, movies, games or reruns, I want them when I want them. Herein lies the problem. TV is a drug, and all it asks is for you to focus. Many of us tend to focus in our family rooms, shutting out the real world. If needed, we focus while commuting, so we don`t have to talk to our fellow travellers. Some, usually the young, are now focusing all the time. TV is a drug that has very little value. Remember, all the content you see is delivered almost for free. This content actually costs billions of dollars. Just look at Hollywood, all the sports teams, most of the cable show content, news, costs lots of money to produce and present, and yet they give it away for free ! Think about that. Imaging what the advertisers are paying, just for the time to have you focused on their products ?
I do not even mind the motives, since being a Capitalist, I appreciate that with their technology and the social compact that its free, we do not have to watch. Watching is not a mandatory rule. The problem that bothers me is that the content is so bad. TV is crap.
My question is, who is more to blame, we the eyeballs, or the fact that the networks think we will put up with this crap ?
Lets not blame the networks. They are only doing what works. If the eyeballs did not watch the content, they would suffer lost sales, and would have to work up other types of content.
Yes, at my age, I have seen every type of ending. The underdog bites the favourite, the favourite does a blow-out, last minute changes, twists of every kind, watched the ebb and flow of events tug at the emotions, and yawned ! To think that I now have access to all the known data, what does that say about our attention span ?
There is only one reason to watch TV, and that is for stress relief. If you have a stressful job, TV can be a great relaxer. IF you are still working, with a short window to full retirement, you need to TV. Otherwise, you will be focused on the day of retirement, while still living in the now. That stress from living in both worlds will endanger your health. TV is a cheap option.
These are also a few reasons for having smart-phones. Wasted time in a doctor’s office can be regained. Commute time can be recovered.
Those few reasons notwithstanding, wasting 20 hours per week, the current average, is a waste of your skills.
Humans are the one creature on our planet that dream one level up. Dogs and cats can only dream about the present, or the past. Humans skew their self portrait to be able to imagine themselves in the future, a future that has them as better off. So, while most of the middle class is poor, they consider themselves average, and joining the middle class becomes a want. Advertisers know this, and use it to hook us.
As a parlour game, check out you favourite programs the next few viewing times, and see who is advertising to you ? You may be surprised. Yes, if you watch sports, you get a lot of car and beer pitches. Lately however, see how many incontinent commercials are headed your way. Viagra has never been more advertised, unless Cialis is the advertiser. Mature diapers are now cropping up, and I saw my first catheter commercial this weekend. Christ, no wonder people PVR today.
Watch the vampire stuff, or Turner Classic Movies, and see what commercial value is being presented. Frankly, I sometimes determine what I want to watch based on the commercial content. It probably means that network TV is a dead industry, and we will be paying for content through cable or its ilk.
So, getting the TV drug for free is one thing. What happens when we now have to pay for it ? One possible outcome is that Boomers decide that TV is just a big waste of time, and start to look around for something else to invest their 20 hours per week in. Lets be ready with some ideas, so we can trigger the right cohort response.
Next time on Boomers – wtf, social mores and their changing dynamic on our culture.
Welcome back to Boomers – wtf blog, and our attempt to stay positive in the face of overarching changes in our world. Staying positive is the mission of this blog, but we need to deal with our social and economic environment first.
The pessimists today are harping on the lack of good paying jobs going forward, as we export work to China, automate everything else, and try to sell each other lawnmowers. To be clear, we are losing jobs because we are burdening them with increasing social costs. These jobs then head overseas. The struggle becomes finding the optimum balance of profits and social costs that, in our capitalist system, allows continued economic growth. Just look at what is happening to the United States.
A major belief is that the US will decide on the next round of economic rules, tax rates, and social services that can be afforded. Boomers the world over await the outcome, and the rest of the countries will soon use whatever logic the US uses to convince their own populations that change is essential. Part of the problem with the European financial issues is that their leaders can not sell their people on a solution to all the debt that has been incurred. They try, but no-one believes that they are part of the problem, so why should they be part of the solution ?
There was a study done last year, asking Europeans who were the hardest working people. Everyone in all the surveyed countries, except one, picked the Germans as the hardest working peoples. The one country who thought they were more industrious than the Germans ? The Greeks ! Enough said…
In the US, the struggle continues in the form of an economic fiscal cliff. The wrangling is basic to our beliefs. Conservatives are solidly resisting new and continued government spending as being detrimental to our growth prospects and the resulting new jobs that could be possible. Liberals look at all the people who are facing huge job cuts, food stamps, and foreclosures, and insist on short term funding. Really, this fight is a bit of a misnomer, as you first have to realize that the US government’s revenues this year will be at record levels. Imagine, record revenues and still huge deficits.
The real fight is over the rapidly growing social costs for Boomers, and the fact that all politicians are simply scared to discuss the truth. So, we are looking at a trade-off, getting all the healthcare and social security we will need to maintain subsistence levels of life, in exchange for no hope for future gain in the form of jobs .
If Boomers are to live another 40 years, how will you afford to eat if our governments have no money ? If you are not sure of this statement, ask a Greek !
The USA is also undergoing many other changes, leading to the idea that Conservatives are slowly being marginalized. Consider the push to legalize same sex marriage, legalized pot, a growing gun control lobby, and a solution to immigration. Wow, what ever happened to the US of the wild west, winner take all, “in your face” attitudes ? Are Boomers the reason ?
I know, we are not Greece, but consider the economic picture going forward. All this talk of the fiscal cliff is very European. Watching the EU try to climb its way out of the financial hole is rewarding in only one instance. That instance is to allow us to determine which of the countries would you rather live in, because that represents the range of choices now available under Capitalism.
Of course, we could choose to throw off the Capitalistic rules, but no-one seems willing to propose an alternative – better said, such proposals are available, but are not gaining any traction with the masses. For example, there are right wing groups in many countries fighting immigration, but they are failing to convince enough people that their cause is justified.
So, how about Denmark ? Greece ? Germany ? Canada ? Which model should the US adopt, as it is only a matter of time. Frankly, you could argue that Capitalism is actually making most countries, slowly, become mirror images of each other, but lets keep the US as an outlier for now.
Is Germany the best choice, the one most similar to the US ? Ignoring the language issue, Germans have attitude, respect their farmers, fight the good fight against pollution, and are hard working. They expect social benefits and lots of holidays, but realize that they have to work for them. Labour works with Business to survive, and is doing a good job keeping its economy going.
Is Canada the right choice ? Conservative type values, lots of energy, a reasonable immigration policy, protestant work ethic, a cheaper medicare system, and a banking sector that is the best in the world.
It’s a fun parlour game to discuss these choices, but the real point can not be lost – Boomers will have to choose, because a good retirement and sitting in our lawn chairs are mutually exclusive choices.
Consider this statistic before you decide that you are not part of the issue. If you add up all the 2012 US states unfunded public pensions for nurses, teachers, police, and firemen, its over $1 Trillion dollars. Unfunded, never to be funded. Cities going bankrupt in California are just the start of a domino game that will only grow. Scary ? Yes, in the short term, but solvable in the timeframe Boomers have, if we start soon.
Next time on Boomers – wtf !, why television is ruining our future.
Welcome back to the Boomers – WTF blog, where our future has yet to be written, and we have time to figure out what our legacy will be.
Is this really an ego question – we usually have such high expectations of everything except ourselves, that we are doomed to not meet them, thus disappointment is a reality ? Perhaps we should use the process of goal setting to ascertain the difference between what we expect and where we are today. This gap seems big to some people, and smaller to others.
An example would be the loss of good paying jobs and the growth of income inequality. How can these be occurring under Capitalism. Are they a built in result, or are we just blind to the rules of the game. To begin a strategy session we need to discover the current facts. To dwell on one, let’s discuss the idea that we Boomers have lost the plot, as the English might say, on our individual role in making Capitalism work.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is a theory for at least two reasons. First, experts would have to study us for a real long time to determine whether we evolved naturally, or evolved from invertebrates as is the story. Looking at other species that are less complex will not confirm our status as the predominate predator in our environment. You would probably need a time machine to really prove the theory.
The second reason the theory remains exactly that is due to punctuated equilibrium. This is the idea that there are tipping points in evolution, places or events that occur due to unforeseen circumstances that could not be explained naturally. For example, scientists that study Darwinism have shown that brain evolution took an amazing leap, when it was determined that the brain’s size can not be explained by natural history. Unlike our disappearing tails, brain size increased faster than the available skull fragments allow timeframe wise. Something caused an event, a tipping point, perhaps a freak accident, or a birth defect – something to very quickly cause the brain span to dramatically increase in a short amount of time. A much shorter timeframe than the theory would have allowed for. We can only guess that this event caused our species to accelerate our progress, to pull away from the apes and monkeys that used to be our competitors. This unexplained event allows for many guesses or interpretations, including the wacky, like alien experimentation.
Punctuated equilibrium also works in economics, and is in the news recently. Many highly regarded Economists are talking about our jobless recovery, and are starting to move away from simple explanations as to why we are losing good jobs worldwide, like blaming salary inequality. The discussion is now turning towards a new tipping point, the same type of occurrence that happened between the agricultural and the industrial revolutions. This tipping point caused major economic disruption before settling into a time when people moved off the farm, started learning new skills, and started growing industrial productivity into major wealth creation.
Are we in a new economic epoch, and how painful will the transition be ? How do Boomers, with all of our experience, wealth, energy, and time, react ? Do we wait to have this change done to us, or do we reach out and influence the coming changes ?
Part of the equation has to include demographics. There are more Boomers in our cohort than in any other cohort in history. That’s a lot of political power and economical clout to be managed. The worry is that all this power is slowly becoming immaterial as we mess with the rules of Capitalism
How, you ask, can we be so successful, and yet be obsolete? Perhaps its because we are not really seeing the future. The best example of this today is the increased welfare cost being riveted to the engine of Capitalism, adding extra weight that is unproductive. Didn’t Mitt Romney discuss this point in his now infamous speech about the 47% of people who live off a government hand-out.
Are our expectations such that we now budget for them, and want more ? Are the French just lazy, or did they not get the memo that a welfare state has rules ? Boomers did not pay enough into the programs like Medicare to fund them independently, so now our kids have to fund it. This is inexcusable.
The point about the French is a classic example. France, as did most of Europe, thought it had the formula just right. Work hard, play hard, pay taxes, and everything will work out. The Germans seem to have kept this societal contract, but the rest of Europe has lost the plot. Some, like the Italians, stopped paying taxes, fudging the formula. The Greeks do not work, fudging the formula. The French, well, let’s consider them a slow moving train wreck, and pull up a chair to watch the crash.
So, no new well paying jobs, lots of low paying jobs that citizens do not want, emigration requirements forced on countries to get the skills needed to maintain GDP, and increased debt we are passing onto our kids. If that is not an economic wake-up call for Boomers, what is ?
Next time in Boomers – wtf, what European country would you like to live in, because each has benefits and consequences, and if you do not pick, someone else will pick for you.
Welcome back to Boomers – wtf, where everyone has an opinion, and they are all different. Wow, this idea of getting Boomers all on the same page regarding our future is going to be an interesting endeavour. For now, let’s take the high road, and see what happens.
In our last blog the idea of an economic fiscal cliff was colouring our future vision. In the Western world, and today much of the developing world, many of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs have been solved. You probably remember Maslow from our high school texts as the psychologist who said we satisfy needs in order of their importance. First was personal security, then safety, through esteem, and finally, to self actualization. His point was that we could not get to the final stage, the “do good” stage, until all of our primary needs were met. It’s hard to think about donating a piece of a new kill to a friend when there were family members who were hungry. Self actualization was the highest of the 5 levels of his personal social hierarchy. The point here is that Boomers all seem to be moving to reach this 5th level, without a definition of a cohort level 6 and beyond. What is next ?
One idea is to examine the difference between our needs and our wants. Today, this chasm seems to be the biggest in our history, because our ability to cross it is so available. We are big dreamers, but have little execution. Perhaps better said, we believe that we do not have enough money to do everything we want to, so all we do is fight to preserve what we have. We pull back from the future, making it a fight of me against everyone else.
So, are Boomer relaxing in our new peace, in our Lazyboy Lounger, with our empty calories ? Maybe. Or are we cynical bastards who just want to consume ?
This needs versus wants discussion is easy to see when you look at our parents, the“Greatest Generation”. They had very few wants, mostly defined as surviving the hard wiring of the depression. They came from the physical labour of the farms and fought the wars we did not have to. They never expected to live this long, and change was at a, comparatively, slow pace. They started the economic miracle that is our rising GDP, and used that capital to initiate the civil wars on equality, women’s rights, and pollution control, while indulging us our hippie moments. What great parents. No helmet laws for us, as they knew the right way to raise kids to be self aware.
Poverty levels have decreased, women’s rights are increasing, we are living longer healthier lives, over population is slowing, Africa is turning the corner economically, there are no major wars. Wow, quite a To Do list. Too bad it’s not ours.
As Boomers, the best you can say is that we carried on, improving on the life we were handed. We continued the economic miracle, and now need to realize that it is our turn to pick the higher goals we want to realize and finance.
So, we need to define our wants, and differentiate them from our needs. We then need to fund our wants, just like our parents did. This is the great goal of our generation, and will not be an easy task. Everyone will have their own needs and will confuse them with their wants for our cohort.
To set an example, and as an exercise in forward planning, what should be on the Boomer “To Do” list ?
– Pick a collective goal, like going to Mars, and all that entails
– Share some collective pain, like fixing global warming
– Continue / redefine poverty goals to cement in our species progress
– Help our parents by accelerating Quality Care ( i.e. cure dementia )
It could be fair to look back on our parent’s transition time, and consider their choices. In the 1970’s, our parents had few choices to self actualize – survival was more the order of the day, what with the Cold War, Vietnam, civil unrest, rising gas prices, and global inflation. It could be fair to say that they stumbled into a posterity that funded all the advantages they enjoyed. Time, technology, and immigration were set to accelerate the economic prosperity and build a large growing middle class. Boomers, on the other hand, are much more astute, aware of the world around them, and have the advantage of seeing their parents try some social experiments that did not work. Just look at what has happened to our Teachers !
Time to leave our parents shadow, and decide on our wants. This list has time to coalesce, and it may be prudent for us to focus and practice on some individual wants before we settle on some cohort goals. Maybe, getting off the couch would be a good start.
Next time, why “Sitting is the New Smoking”, on Boomers – WTF.
When Francis Fukuyama wrote his book on the End of History, he was essentially stating that mankind had somehow stumbled into the winning organizational formula, Liberal Democracy, which could be redefined as Social Capitalism. Thus, history had ended as there will be no more titanic struggles between mankind that usually resulted in wars, death, and destruction. Capitalism won over socialism, fascism, and my favourite, religion, as the most effective way to organize ourselves for the future growth of our species.
By the way, I do not think Capitalism is perfect, but that is a subject for another day.
Did he mean that we should just stagnate, as some comments the blog has received suggest ? It is interesting that Boomers now seem to be listless, focusing completely on our navel, glazing intently downward, with few items getting through our tunnel vision.
This need, guilt, call it what you want, is starting to eat away at me. When I ask my friends who are in the same life cohort, they express it in many ways. Some who are not yet retired ignore it altogether, as they are focused on the retirement goal line. My retired friends also search for a description, in the hopes that defining something will trigger a solution.
After all, that how we have been trained for our working life – cause and effect. So, define something, and work on a solution. The trouble is, this is a new problem, one I call the greatest riddle of our generation.
Perhaps another definition is that boomers do not have a To Do list today. We are all focused on retirement today, Freedom 55, “we made it” advertising, and do not want anything that will upset our plans. Can it be true that we were focused just on a 30 year date, and now what ? The first day of your retirement should be fun, but what then ?
Perhaps we really feel a large gap between our wants and our needs. This hole is definitely individualized, but easily could bubble up into a cohort issue.
Is it as easy to say that we lived on speed of culture, but we now want to slow down, and just can’t stop this trend that our kids have been trained to use successfully ?
Could it be defined as a focus on a life mid term report card, so don’t get too upset with a lack of future – lets enjoy our progress to date ? Is this really a rush to judgement ? Doesn’t everyone still get the nightmare where they are unprepared for a test ?
Please comment and better define your best view of this issue. A favourite visualization so far seems to be that Boomers have a want vs need discrepancy, a gap that we see, and can not jump over, yet. We want lots, and have confused our needs with a funding crisis.
One example of a want and need delta is on Health care. Boomers get the government we want, and we are successfully dividing our governments to be unable to do big things. This is a longer conversation, but the point is that we are looking at a fiscal cliff economically, and health care is a major piece. It needs to be changed, or funded, and we seem to be 50/50 on this.
While spending the last 2 weeks getting a hip replacement, I was exposed to the health care system Boomers have been funding our whole lives. My broken hip would have meant a 6 month convalesce, with 3 months of that spent in a wheelchair. Today, my hip replacement means 6 weeks in convalesce, and I was walking the day after surgery. Unbelievable. We all want the progress that health care has given us, and we need to continue to fund this system. After all, just look at our parents, and suddenly health care, or better said, quality care, is a need. It must be funded, and letting our parents be the experiment is something I can live with.
The guy in the next bed to me had another amazing story. I listened in as the doctor listed off the treatment options that this 69 year old otherwise healthy man had with cancer eating through his leg. 20 years ago, we would have just cut off his leg near the hip to ensure that the cancer was eliminated. Imagine his quality of life then. Today, in a 12 hour operation, the infected bone and muscle would be cut out, a tube would be fitted and inserted into the area where the bone was extracted, muscles would be taken off his back, and replanted into his thigh, and excess skin would be taken off somewhere to sew closed the big hole that would be the result. With major physiotherapy, the man would be able to walk again. Unbelievable. Who even knew there were extra muscles that could be harvested for these types of fixes !
This system has to be saved – someone just tell me what I need to do to accomplish this and stop telling me stories about black babies filling up our emergency rooms. That is not the argument at all, and why aren’t our politicians telling us this ?
The fiscal cliff is the perfect example of the Boomer collective denial. We want everything, and don’t want to pay for it. Personally, I hate the argument whereby Boomers want everything because we already paid for it. Not even close. Again, our politicians don’t seem to want to explain that most Boomers paid for the leg amputation, not the replacement. MRI’s were not funded by people in their 50’s ! Yes we need it, so if the argument can be reframed as who pays, great.
The real answer is more growth, but in the interim, higher taxes are needed.
Next time, admitting that our wants drastically overwhelm our needs, and what we could start thinking about doing, on Boomers… WTF !
Boomers - wtf ! 